With teacher quality quickly becoming one of the most popular strategies for reforming education, a piece in the New York Times today is particularly interesting as it details just how hard and expensive it is to get rid of incompetant tenured teachers in New York City. Even with a targeted effort, the city has only managed to fire three of its 55,000 for incompetance. Ten others resigned or retired in the face of charges against them.
Maryland is now considering extending the length of time it takes to get tenure in Maryland to three years from two in order to give districts a longer period of time to assess whether they want to keep a teacher.